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The name of the game is Talent Management and Retention. Period.  The best companies have known this for years--others think it's not worth it, until they're stuck, literally, without a prayer in the world because their top-talent just left.

This happens in all arenas, especially when you're working with people that have a talent or skill that is difficult to reproduce.  This is because of the lens with which we all perceive the world starts with our own area of concern.  For example:

• Like it or not, the 'IT guy' actually does cares much more about hard-drive space on his servers than about your bottom-line or the P&L.
• Similarly, accounting is much more interested in the balance sheet than the sales quota...
• while the sales team is more interested in closing deals than following your meticulous, beautiful 'order process matrix'.

See where I'm going with this?

The problem here is that, management (I am talking to you), sometimes all too willing to keep the bus doors wide open (in case the 'wrong people' choose to get off) forget that, often, those people will take the spark-plugs, steering wheel, and drive chain of the bus with them.

People are your greatest asset.  Ignore them at your peril.

Dennis Kennedy points us to Mike McBride's recent departure from his old company where he was the "One Man IT Department" and nobody cared too much about keeping him around.

Despite my best efforts to work on preventing break downs, to proactively deal with training issues and database maintenance, and to try and suggest ways to improve the state of the technology (which were mostly ignored anyway), most of the people I worked with saw my role as little more than sitting around waiting for something to break. A view that was obviously shared by my supervisor and other senior management, given their refusal, six months later, to actually hire another IT person because "we really wouldn't have enough for them to do".

Which would be fine, had they not allowed me to simply walk out the door and take most of my knowledge with me. They've gotten away with that, because in the interest of parting on good terms and not wanting to leave the handful of very good friends I made while working there left hanging, I agreed to be "on-call" for them in case of emergencies or to do some things that they would have had trouble doing on their own, for 6 months or until they found a replacement. One week from today, the 6 months will be over.

It's sad that Mike had to blog about his situation in order to get noticed and appreciated.  What's worse is, I'd almost guarantee that there were conversations with his managers that made his managers feel like Mike loved his job and had no intention of leaving...

Remember: No matter what they tell you, your employees will always, always, always look out for themselves. 

Some call it greed, others call it selfish.  I call it 'The Invisible Hand' and Capitalism in pure form working its magic day after day.

Perfect.